


giving them credit

by pleadingforclarity



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 15:13:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13320858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pleadingforclarity/pseuds/pleadingforclarity
Summary: mace discovers some stuff about the team.





	giving them credit

**Author's Note:**

> miss you, mace. here's a little something set around the beginning of season 4.

_"Well, I have to admit, Jemma is much tougher than I'd recently given her credit for."_

 

He watched Daisy scoff silently at his statement and look away as if she was recounting a memory. 

“Yeah, well, being in SHIELD will do that to you.” 

 

That line was filled with- with irony, with pain, with sadness. He guessed she wasn't _only_ talking about Simmons.

So he nodded to himself, glancing back up at her as she continued. “I think Simmons’s been kidnapped, like,” she paused, shaking her head, “three times since I’ve known her.”

 

He looked at her incredulously, raising his eyebrows and shifting uncomfortably as he leaned in closer. Agent Simmons had never talked about her past, about her time at SHIELD- then again, none of them had, and not with _him_ , at least. Coulson’s team was as tightly knit as a family, he’d learned, and they'd been through _a lot together_. He realized that he didn't really know anything about what'd they'd done, other than the stuff he'd been briefed on. And the briefing before taking the job as Director had been pretty sparse. 

 

“Really?” he asked, waiting anxiously for her reply.

 

Daisy just looked out the window and replied softly, words laced with something darker, “Yeah, well… only twice on this planet.”

 

His expression didn’t change. He didn’t move. He just stood there, looked at the floor, and said nothing.

 

How could you respond to something like that?

 

Daisy walked away, leaving him there. She left him to sink in his own thoughts, his confusion, his _ignorance_.

 

He had to know.

 

His legs led him out of the Zephyr, into the Playground, to his office. He didn’t acknowledge the guards at his door or the agents asking for him.

 

He just had to know.

 

After grabbing the key from his locked desk, he walked briskly to the vault where the files were kept. The personal files. The ones he had previously avoided. Personal connections didn’t really matter if they were all a team: ‘A team that trusts', and so on.

 

On the way, he tried not to make eye contact with anyone in the hallway. He could sense Mack’s eyes on him from the lab, but he kept walking, shutting the door behind him when he finally reached the vault.

It was a cold, dark, closet-like room. It took him awhile, but he found the personnel files eventually.

He searched for the team. It took him longer than he had thought to find the 'original' group that had been dubbed "The Bus Team".

 

**_Coulson, Phil._ **

His whole life was dedicated to SHIELD.

Deceased. Living.

He’d have to ask Coulson about that last bit. 

 

**_May, Melinda._ **

The Calvary. Bahrain. He read about her trauma. About her request to leave the field, about Coulson’s request for her.

She'd known Coulson forever.

That’s why.

 

**_Ward, Grant._ **

It was differently colored: more papers, a lot more red. 

A solo type of guy. Nazi. Hydra. _Hive_. Traitor. 

Garrett’s mentee. And eventually a husk for an alien to inhabit.

Mace’s _hands_ felt dirty after reading it all.

 

**_Poots, Mary Sue (Skye)// Johnson, Daisy// INHUMAN._ **

She was a hacker, a vigilante, a team member, an Inhuman, a leader.

Connections to Lincoln Campbell. That made sense now.

She was so much more than the "Quake" he’d heard about. 

 

**_Fitz, Leopold._ **

His name was _Leopold_? 

Oh, that’s why he doesn’t go by Leo. 

Engineer. Brain trauma. Hallucinations. Fitz made the cloaking systems for the Zephyr?

Alternative Names/Nicknames- "Fitzsimmons"

_What?_

 

**_Simmons, Jemma._ **

Two PHDs. Academy at 17. Partners with Fitz for- he did the math- _10 years_ now.

No wonder the two of them never willingly leave each other’s side. 

Fitzsimmons. Coulson still calls them that. They must’ve been so young when they first joined the team.

She had had an alien virus. She’d jumped out of the ‘Bus’ (what?) to save the team. Ward had saved her. 

Then, Ward put the her and Fitz in a box that sank to the bottom of the ocean. And she pulled Fitz up to the surface. 

She left, telling Coulson that Fitz was better when she wasn't around. 

She left to be undercover at Hydra.

_Undercover at Hydra._

When she came back, May taught her combat skills. He flipped through May’s approval comments- ‘She is stronger than most people think’.

No wonder. No wonder they’re family. Coulson’s team _grew up_ together. Daisy and Fitz and Simmons...

 

Mace felt sick to his stomach, _sick_ because of the things he’d done to split them up, to change their system, to change them.

 

Each page in Jemma Simmons’s file was white hot. 

 

And then he was touching blue tinted photographs. Transcripts of audio recordings from a planet.

_The_ planet.

She was sucked through a portal to Maveth. _Death_.

She spent six months there. 

 

The next pages Mace saw were all in Fitz’s handwriting- notes, information, a piece of dusty old parchment. As he flipped, the words became more and more panicked. ‘She won’t give up’ written in the margins, crossed out, and then written again. 

When she got back, when Fitz had, according to Coulson, ‘jumped into the portal without our consent’, Jemma had experienced major PTSD. According to their psychiatrist, she still does.

She _still_ does, and yet, she’s _here_.

 

Mace shut the file, breathing shakily, shaking his head to try and clear his splotchy vision. He backed away from the drawer.

 

Daisy’s voice rang in his ears. “Yeah, well, being in SHIELD will do that to you.”


End file.
